Wondering about historic accuracy of Axis victory conditions.


  • I agree with you about the victory conditions, HAwk.
    What WAS is not good. Allies Always win.
    What IS, however, is also not good. Allies are basically forced/limited to spend too much against Japan. because of the 6VC threat.


  • @General:

    On a side note I do feel Germany should be rewarded for Russian conquest by having Turkey and Spain ally with them since they were on the fence to begin with.

    I believe that neutrals are likely to join the stronger power, and not the loosing one. Its opposite in A&A games because of balance. If you occupy a true neutral in this game, all the neutrals in the world will turn against you. This is a design to script the game to follow a historical correct path. Every WWII games have this flaw. But the real war was different. After Germany crushed neutral Poland, all the minor neutrals like Finland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia etc joined the strong Germany. Not one minor would go to war against the strong Germany at that time. But after Russia had proved to be stronger than Germany, all the former German allies mentioned above, switched side and went to war against Germany. Major neutrals like Sweden, Spain and Turkey made trade agreements with the strong Germany after Poland got crushed,  but after Germany lost at Stalingrad they all switched side, and started to support the by now stronger Allies.

    But how to implement realistic rules into A&A ? Maybe ditch the 5 IPC NOs Germany get after capturing Russian cities, and rather give them the IPC income from the true neutrals, representing trade agreements. And when the tide turn, let the Allies get the trade income from the neutrals. After all, the NO was designed to make a short game, so it doesn’t matter from where they take the IPC.


  • @ChocolatePancake:

    Also, don’t forget that the USA had the nuclear option.
    If the war in Europe kept on grinding, then I bet the allies would have eventually nuked Germany out of existence.
    With the overwhelming air and naval advantage the allies had, Germany would have had no chance.

    I don’t think so. They only made two bombs, and had stuff for one more. You could hardly bomb any nation out of existence with that. Strategic bombing is also severely overrated, it cost more to build bombs than the value of the cornfields that most of them land in. The Allied bombing killed more French cows than Germans, and that’s a fact. I figure the Allies would have won anyway, but because of Patton and not the Bomb.

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    The Germans had Tabun nerve agent in vast quantities and a means of delivery with their V weapons. Sarin, the nastiest of organo-phosphates was also invented by them. The millions of Gas masks that were issued to civilians in England would have been ineffective against it, since it doesn’t need to be inhaled to kill. It’s one of the ugly, highly secret Chemical weapons that IG Farben had developed for the Reich in the camps in the east. No one else had weapons like this. It was the deadliest substance on earth at the time, and totally unknown to the Allies. Synthetic rubber and chemical weapons are basically what they were doing at those death camps in Poland. Their Bio weapons were also very advanced. They had plans to attack the Soviets with hoof and mouth disease and defoliants, the stuff that later became agent Orange, to destroy their food supplies and cause mass famine.

    The Americans and Soviets both exploited this knowledge and the scientists that invented it after the war.

    Obviously the game doesn’t model any of this, just like it doesn’t model the Atomic bomb. But the timeline is interesting, because the Germans already had huge stockpiles of Tabun before Trinity was even tested.

    It’s sobering to consider how much more terrifying the war could have gotten if these weapons were actually used.

  • Customizer

    @Black_Elk:

    It’s sobering to consider how much more terrifying the war could have gotten if these weapons were actually used.

    I know what you mean. Somewhere I have an alternate history story where Germany decided to use nerve gas at Kursk. They not only wiped out thousands of Soviet troops, they also captured hundreds of tanks and planes that were perfectly good to use once the nerve gas dissipated. What was worse for the Russians was the winds were blowing east so the big nerve gas cloud also wiped out even more troops further east.
    The Germans did indeed use these Soviet weapons to good effect. Not only did they turn the war in Russia, they had more reinforcements to send to Sicily. In this scenario, the Italians were still in the war on the German side and apparently they really liked the Soviet IL-2 Sturmoviks. Luftwaffe pilots apparently didn’t care for them.
    D-Day happened and the Allies first made good progress. However, it was eventually reversed due to the Germans ability to flood the area with many more Tigers and Panthers then they actually did in history.
    Eventually, the Western Allies did sue for peace with the Euro-Axis. The US was still in a vicious war with Japan and was beating them badly. For peace with the US/UK, Germany totally sold out their “ally” Japan, basically letting the US have their way with them.
    Now there existed a Cold War between the West and Germany. This lasted for some 50 years until the mid 90s. US history was radically different as well. I don’t remember what happened with England, but Canada and Mexico ended up joining the US which now had 100 states. A big Western Hemisphere union came about with the US and all Central and South American countries, called the Pan-American Union I think, for security against the now huge Third Reich. The Third Reich eventually fell in the mid 90s due to some sort of vicious computer virus created in the US and introduced into the Reich’s computer systems. The Reich crumbled almost overnight, with a number of US supported “revolutions” throughout Europe hastening the fall.
    With the Third Reich’s downfall, some new threat popped up. Some kind of terrorist organization similar to Al Qaeda but with a different name. The 9/11 attacks even occurred but instead of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, I think it was the Golden Gate Bridge, the Capital Building and Sears Tower that were attacked.
    Also, the list of presidents in the US was way different than what we had. At one point, either the US president or Vice president was in our world a Russian president. Really weird US history in this alternate reality story, but still interesting.

    As for my question, it sounds like most of you pretty much think what I did. If we would have kept on going, the US would have eventually won. I think India/ANZAC would have worked their way up and liberated Russia. The US Navy and Air Force, with help from the RAF, would have overwhelmed the shiny new Kreigsmarine. Italy would have lost control of the Med. I don’t think Sealion would ever happen. Or if it did, then it would be too costly to Germany and the US would liberate England fairly easily. Eventually I think Germany and Italy would have no choice but to turtle on Europe itself with a hugely powerful US in the west and Med and a steadily growing Red Army backed by India and ANZAC units in the east.
    The only problem is I think playing out this game would have taken way too long, like 25-30 rounds or so. We just wanted to get the tables put away.


  • Even if Germany had taken Moscow in the real war and somehow knocked Russia out of the war, the allies still would have won, if they kept fighting. This is because of manpower as well as naval and air dominance. I think you guys vastly underestimate the plane superiority the allies had over Germany and her allies. Also Germany could never build up a massive fleet, as some have suggested. After Japan was neutralized by the US fleet the US could then turn their fleet around towards Germany. Literally the allies would have a 100 times more ships than the Germans and far superior ships at that.

    Landing in Europe would have been impossible, but it would come down to a plane battle, and once the atom bomb came out it’s game over! No, America didn’t only have the ability to launch 3 Atom bombs. If America knew the war would take a lot longer they could have made an unlimited amount of nukes.

    This is all contingent on Russia folding as well, and unlike in Axis and Allies, taking Moscow wouldn’t have meant that Russia was out of the war. Russia had nearly twice as many tanks, artillery, and ground troops as the Germans. Also they had 5 times as many air units. Their factories had also moved to the Urals, so they still would have the capacity to build a lot of units. Stalingrad wouldn’t have had to be defended as much because to take Moscow Germany would have had to put almost everything there.

    In conclusion the axis never had a chance once America joined the war, and even if America didn’t join the war it would have been really really hard for them to win. Just look at the numbers and you can see why.


  • @General:

    I wonder if access to all those minerals in Eastern Russia and Siberia would have jumpstarted the German atomic program, along with the natural momentum of subduing the Soviet Union. Image a new Cold War breaking out between US and German-led blocs.

    On a side note I do feel Germany should be rewarded for Russian conquest by having Turkey and Spain ally with them since they were on the fence to begin with.

    The problem wasn’t raw materials for the Nazis.  Their problem was that Heisenberg couldn’t figure out how to achieve yield through critical mass.  Their scientists simply weren’t as good as Fermi, Oppenheimer, and the rest of the University of Chicago physics department.


  • @Narvik:

    @ChocolatePancake:

    Also, don’t forget that the USA had the nuclear option.
    If the war in Europe kept on grinding, then I bet the allies would have eventually nuked Germany out of existence.
    With the overwhelming air and naval advantage the allies had, Germany would have had no chance.

    I don’t think so. They only made two bombs, and had stuff for one more. You could hardly bomb any nation out of existence with that. Strategic bombing is also severely overrated, it cost more to build bombs than the value of the cornfields that most of them land in. The Allied bombing killed more French cows than Germans, and that’s a fact. I figure the Allies would have won anyway, but because of Patton and not the Bomb.

    Not true.  The United States had more weapons in 1945 than simply two… they had a production bottleneck, but by the end of the calendar year of '45, they had around a dozen weapons or so, and ramping up production.

    Would have taken longer, but yes, we could have leveled a lot of industrial areas of Germany (or Japan) using nuclear weapons.

  • '14 Customizer

    There were 3 bombs built but only 2 were implosion type. The first was named “the Gadget” and looked like a huge sphere with many wires and tubes.  The second bomb, “The Little Boy” was very different and used the “gun method” to create fission of U-235.  The third was “the Fat Man” and was an implosion type bomb like the Gadget.


  • Yes, there were three bombs built… but more were ready by the third week in August, with the third bomb two be dropped on Japan by 19 August, with another three weapons ready by September, and another three to be ready in October, for a total of 9 weapons to be dropped on the Home Islands before Olympic took off in November.

    http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

  • '14 Customizer

    That’s really interesting MightyChris.


  • @knp7765:

    So, my question is, if this situation were to occur back in the 40s, do you think it would have been an actual win for Germany and Italy? Would the Allies had sued for peace with Germany or kept going?
    I am thinking that the US and UK would keep going. The US already has a strong fleet in Gibraltar so Sealion can probably be prevented.
    If Russia would have actually fallen during the war, would the Western Allies have sued for peace?
    As far as this game is concerned, I think that if we kept playing this out the US would eventually win. As big as Germany is right now, it would still be hard for them to keep resisting the US advances and fend off forces from India and ANZAC. Then again, a strong Italy might make the difference.
    So what do you guys think? Would this situation be an actual victory? OR, just a victory for game purposes?

    It would depend on the year in which the Soviet Union fell. If it was in 1941/42 at the height of Axis power in Europe and the Atomic Bomb years away then yes I think they would have sued for peace.

    If it was post 1943 when the US and Comonwealth forces where finally getting up to speed in terms of technology and battlefield tactics when who knows.


  • Not to mention the capture of the Persian Gulf oil fields by the axis.

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